Last week, the Illinois Senate Executive Committee approved SB 1064, Senator Antonio Munoz’s bill to bar the State, counties, and municipalities from contracting with private companies to run civil detention centers. SB 1064 passed committee with eight votes. This bill would block an immigration detention center being proposed for Crete, in the south Chicago suburbs. The bill now goes to the full Senate, which could take up the bill later this week.

This legislation comes as the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the nation’s most notorious builder and operator of private prisons, has targeted Crete as the site of a new detention facility that would house 600 – 700 federal immigration detainees. SB 1064 would bar municipalities like Crete from partnering with companies like CCA on such civil detention facilities.

The Crete center is one of the several facilities that US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) seeks to build throughout the US. During each of the last three years, ICE has deported nearly 400,000 immigrants, most of whom have no criminal record. As it ramps up deportations, ICE is also planning more detention space to hold the people it catches – even though many of these individuals pose no threat and can be safety released.